The first judge cries. The second judge asks for a second bowl. The third judge—the same drunk critic from earlier—takes a sip, closes his eyes, and says: “This isn’t soup. This is a memory of being loved when you were unlovable.”

That restaurant’s name? Act II: The Anatomy of a Salvation Machine Giant Wok is not a place you find. It’s a place you surrender to. It’s a low-slung, greasy spoon wedged between a karaoke bar and a pawn shop. The wallpaper is peeling. The exhaust fan sounds like a dying walrus. And in the center of the open kitchen sits the namesake: a wok so enormous, so blackened with decades of wok hei (the “breath of the wok”), that it looks less like cookware and more like a dormant volcano.

is the ex-fiancée of the man who ruined Poong. She’s also a bankrupt heiress, a former professional golfer, and a woman with a secret: she can’t taste food. After a childhood trauma, her palate went blank. Yet she ends up as the cashier at Giant Wok, where the only thing she can feel is the warmth of the wok’s flame on her face. She doesn’t eat the food. She just watches others eat. It’s a devastatingly lonely existence, and she hides it behind a smile that cracks like old ceramic.